Early CAR-T Therapies Produced Long Term Remission in Some Cases

Much of what we'd like to know about cancer therapies takes a long time to emerge. Only now is the long term data available for the first CAR-T immunotherapies aimed at forms of leukemia in which cancerous cells are clearly and distinctly marked by characteristic surface features. The field has long since expanded, and researchers are at present trying to adjust CAR-T in order to apply this form of treatment to solid cancers. Long term remission is not the same as a cure, as cancer is a disease in which it remains challenging to say whether or not a few remnant cancer cells await a return at some future time. If one can make it ten years in remission, with no sign of cancer, however, that may well be a cure under the hood, the cancer gone and never to return. The year was 2010, and Olson was one of the first people with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia to receive the treatment, called CAR-T cell therapy. When his doctors wrote the protocol for the clinical trial that Olson was involved in, they hoped that the genetically engineered cells might survive for a month in his body. They knew that cancer research could be heartbreaking; they didn't dare to expect a cure. But more than ten years later, the immune cells continue to patrol Olson's blood and he remains in remission. Doctors finally ready to admit what Olson suspected all along. "We can now conclude that CAR T cells can actually cure patients with leukaemia." CAR-T cell therapies involve removing immune cell...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs